When the child begins to think and to make use of the written language to express his rudimentary thinking, he is ready for elementary work; and this fitness is a question not of age or other incidental circumstance but of mental maturity.

There can be no 'graduated exercises in drawing' leading up to an artistic creation. That goal can be attained only through the development of mechanical technique and through the freedom of the spirit.

Early childhood education is the key to the betterment of society.

We cannot create observers by saying 'observe', but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses.

We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being.

When you have solved the problem of controlling the attention of the child, you have solved the entire problem of its education.

Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.

If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man's future. For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind?

If education is protection to life, you will realize that it is necessary that education accompany life during its whole course.

Education is a work of self-organization by which man adapts himself to the conditions of life.

Every one in the world ought to do the things for which he is specially adapted. It is the part of wisdom to recognize what each one of us is best fitted for, and it is the part of education to perfect and utilize such predispositions. Because education can direct and aid nature but can never transform her.

My system is to be considered a system leading up, in a general way, to education. It can be followed not only in the education of little children from three to six years of age, but can be extended to children up to ten years of age.

At three years of age, the child has already laid the foundations of the human personality and needs the special help of education in the school. The acquisitions he has made are such that we can say the child who enters school at three is an old man.

Personal health is related to self-control and to the worship of life in all its natural beauty - self-control bringing with it happiness, renewed youth, and long life.

One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.

The respect and protection of woman and of maternity should be raised to the position of an inalienable social duty and should become one of the principles of human morality.

Now, what really makes a teacher is love for the human child; for it is love that transforms the social duty of the educator into the higher consciousness of a mission.

Travel stories teach geography; insect stories lead the child into natural science; and so on. The teacher, in short, can use reading to introduce her pupils to the most varied subjects; and the moment they have been thus started, they can go on to any limit guided by the single passion for reading.

The selfsame procedure which zoology, a branch of the natural sciences, applies to the study of animals, anthropology must apply to the study of man; and by doing so, it enrolls itself as a science in the field of nature.

The ancient superficial idea of the uniform and progressive growth of the human personality has remained unaltered, and the erroneous belief has persisted that it is the duty of the adult to fashion the child according to the pattern required by society.

There are two 'faiths' which can uphold humans: faith in God and faith in oneself. And these two faiths should exist side by side: the first belongs to one's inner life, the second to one's life in society.

In the first three years of life, the foundations of physical and also of psychic health are laid. In these years, the child not only increases in size but passes through great transformations. This is the age in which language and movement develop. The child must be safeguarded in order that these activities may develop freely.

If intelligence is the triumph of life, the spoken word is the marvellous means by which this intelligence is manifested.

It is by developing the individual that he is prepared for that wonderful manifestation of the human intelligence, which drawing constitutes. The ability to see reality in form, in color, in proportion, to be master of the movements of one's own hand - that is what is necessary.

The child's mind is not the type of mind we adults possess. If we call our type of mind the conscious type, that of the child is an unconscious mind. Now an unconscious mind does not mean an inferior mind. An unconscious mind can be full of intelligence. One will find this type of intelligence in every being, and every insect has it.

Through machinery, man can exert tremendous powers almost as fantastic as if he were the hero of a fairy tale. Through machinery, man can travel with an ever increasing velocity; he can fly through the air and go beneath the surface of the ocean.

The social relations which are the basis of the reproduction of the species are founded upon the continuous union of parents in marriage.

The greatest sign of success for a teacher... is to be able to say, 'The children are now working as if I did not exist.'

The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.

The greatest development is achieved during the first years of life, and therefore it is then that the greatest care should be taken. If this is done, then the child does not become a burden; he will reveal himself as the greatest marvel of nature.

Speech is one of the marvels that characterize man, and also one of the most difficult spontaneous creations that have been accomplished by nature.

It is fortunate, I think, that nature is not bounded by human reason and by laboratory work and experimentation, for by the laws of pure reason and by microscopic investigation, it might easily have been proved, long before this, that children could not be born.

How can any one paint who cannot grade colors? How can any one write poetry who has not learnt to hear and see?

The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything!

Dependence is not patriotism. A man does not love his mother if he hangs about her to the point of burdening her with a weak, feckless son.

All work is noble; the only ignoble thing is to live without working. There is need to realize the value of work in all its forms whether manual or intellectual, to be called 'mate,' to have sympathetic understanding of all forms of activity.

We all know the sense of comfort of which we are conscious when a good half of the floor space in a room is unencumbered; this seems to offer us the agreeable possibility of moving about freely.